Three photos posted by the netizen on a popular social networking
website showed several bystanders and the sidewalk beside several shops
in the city's Jichengjiang district covered in feces while shop signs
were slathered in foul slurry.

The netizen and local government sources have not elaborated on what happened to cause the tank to burst.

Another thing I’ve been hearing is that Americans have a reputation
around the world for being boorish, poorly-mannered, arrogant,
intellectually stilted, incurious, et cetera. I’m seeing Americans
criticized for reaching middle age without ever having held a passport,
meaning they haven’t traveled outside their country’s borders. And it
occurs to me: If these are the ones who have not traveled outside the
country’s borders, shouldn’t we be looking to the enlightened,
sophisticated, well-traveled nuanced-thinking blue-bloods as we try to
figure out how we got our reputation? Some of them can act pretty
boorish. Why blame the people who haven’t traveled anywhere?

Monday, April 16, 2012

Back in October, a squirrel invaded Busch Stadium
during the St. Louis Cardinals run to the 2011 World Series. Fredbird
let it live out of kindness, and the rodent would become so popular, it
took the place of Skip Schumaker on one of his baseball cards.

Finally, the mascot has been immortalized for all time on jewelry commemorating the Cardinals 11th world championship.

This is not satire: The Cardinals made "The Rally Squirrel" part of the design of their World Series rings,
which they received on Saturday. You can clearly see it in the photo,
under the "StL" logo and above the crest of the bats and home plate with
Chris Carpenter's No. 29. If Schumaker thought a squirrel on his baseball card was "ridiculous," what must he think of the rodent on the most symbolic piece of bling a ballplayer can own?

Sunday, April 01, 2012

We hear so often about "settled science". About research that "proves". Now comes some troubling news.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former researcher at Amgen Inc
has found that many basic studies on cancer -- a high proportion of
them from university labs -- are unreliable, with grim consequences for
producing new medicines in the future.

During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley
identified 53 "landmark" publications -- papers in top journals, from
reputable labs -- for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to
double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.

Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He
described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in
the journal Nature....Begley's experience echoes a report from scientists at
Bayer AG last year. Neither group of researchers alleges fraud, nor
would they identify the research they had tried to replicate.

But they and others fear the phenomenon is the product
of a skewed system of incentives that has academics cutting corners to
further their careers.

Actually, it's pitching. But since the Colorado Rockies are in the National League, he'll be batting as well. Who? Jamie Moyer, that is.

Moyer, entering his 25th major league season, posted a 2.77 ERA this spring and beat out 22-year-old Tyler Chatwood and 28-year-old Guillermo Moscoso for a rotation spot. If Moyer wins one game, he will become the oldest player to win a game in the majors. At 49 years of age, Moyer is older than eight current MLB managers and 16 general managers.

Friday, March 30, 2012

SEATTLE – Do you love bacon to death? Is your dying wish is to be buried in bacon?

The local company behind Bacon Salt and Baconnaise are making it happen. J&D’s Foods has created the Bacon Coffin, what they call the world’s first bacon-wrapped casket.

"Yes, this is really real," wrote J&D owners Justin and Dave in a
press release. “Bacon Coffins are finished with a painted Bacon and
Pork shading and accented with gold stationary handles. The interior has
an adjustable bed and mattress, a bacon memorial tube and is completed
in ivory crepe coffin linens."

The Bacon Coffins are available for $2,999.95 plus shipping.

In the email announcing the Bacon Coffin, Justin and Dave added, "And yeah, your (sic) right we’re probably going to hell for this one."

Sunday, March 25, 2012

From the Associated Press comes news that should warm the cockles of Sacha Baron Cohen's heart. It's too good to paraphrase, so here it is in its entirety.

MOSCOW -- Kazakhstan has called the playing of a spoof of its
national anthem at an international sporting event "a scandal" and
demanded an investigation of the incident.

Maria Dmitrienko won a
gold medal for Kazakhstan on Thursday at the Arab Shooting Championships
in Kuwait, but during the award ceremony the public address system
broadcast the spoof anthem from the 2006 movie "Borat," which offended
many Kazakhs by portraying the country as backward and degenerate.

Foreign
Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov told the ITAR-Tass news agency the
incident "is, of course, a scandal and demands a thorough investigation,
which we intend to conduct."

ITAR-Tass quoted shooting team
member Oksana Stavitskaya as saying that Asian Shooting Federation
president Sheikh Salman al-Sabah had apologized to the team.

"Sheikh
Salman personally apologized to us. He recognized that the use of the
music from the scandalous film in place of the anthem of Kazakhstan was
completely a mistake of the organizers. He explained that the awards
ceremony was conducted by a firm under contract," Stavitskaya said.

The
Kazakh news agency Tengri quoted team coach Anvar Yunusmetov as saying
tournament organizers had downloaded various countries' national anthems
from the Internet.

Later on Saturday, the event's organizers in
Kuwait also apologized to the Kazakh delegation regarding the
"unintentional" mistake of playing the "wrong national anthem" during
the awards ceremony, according to the statement published on the
state-owned Kuwait News Agency.

The organizing committee, in a
statement, said the mistake was corrected and the national anthem of
Kazakhstan was replayed afterward. The committee expressed "deep sorrow"
for the mistake and reaffirmed that ties between the sporting
communities of the two countries remained strong.

Political scientist James Q Wilson recently passed away. For your consideration, here is one of his thoughts on why civil servants in modern bureaucracies work and think the way
they do.

First, public sector agencies are not allowed to retain earnings,
and therefore have no incentive towards economizing costs. A public
agency that ends the fiscal year with a surplus because of efficient
operations cannot distribute those savings to its managers and employees
as incentives, but rather is likely to see its budget cut for the next
year on the grounds that it was allocated too much in the first place.
This explains the rush to push money out the door at the end of the
fiscal year whether the spending is needed or not, and why bureaucracies
are so often inefficient...

This is from a pamphlet by a Presbyterian minister, William J. H.
Boetcker (1873-1962) and entitled The Ten Cannots. It was originally
published in 1916 but its message is very fitting to us today

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Today’s comedy segment comes courtesy of the madcaps at the European
Union. Picking on the Europeans has become cliché, especially when they
hand you such lame material, like the EU-produced video below that is
supposed to convey . . . what, exactly? Moviegoers may think it a
slightly wacky homage to Tarantino’s Kill Bill, showing that Europeans are so much more civilized because they’d sit down and charm their opponents rather than slice them up.

But the real punch line is that the European Union has withdrawn the video because it is—wait for it—racist! As Denis Boyles comments
over on NRO’s Corner, “And for all we know, this isn’t a propaganda
film so much as a security breach: It clearly reveals the E.U.’s defense
strategy, which is based on stern disapproval.”

So let me get this straight....the EU, which is having problems with its current fringe members, makes a video about how we get better when we get bigger. And we can all come together by just....well, whatever.

But the use of "non-European" characters is now "racist". How fitting for the drones in Brussels.

When it comes to paying for tickets generated by New Orleans' traffic cameras,
some of the biggest scofflaws are city employees driving
taxpayer-financed vehicles. As of September 2011, at least 400 city
vehicles had racked up fines totaling $547,580, according to records
provided by City Hall in response to a public-records request.

And five of the 20 vehicles that owe the city the most money are city vehicles, the records show.
All
that is about to change. But not before the slate is wiped clean, said
Andy Kopplin, chief administrative officer to Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Kopplin
said he doesn't think it would be fair to try to go after employees who
have racked up tickets because the city has not spelled out clear rules
thus far.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The UK bookmaking firm Paddy Power has run afoul of the Advertising Standards Authority for an ad that is "offensive" to transgendered individuals. From the Guardian:

The advertising regulator is to investigate a TV ad by Irish bookmaker Paddy Power that asks viewers to spot the "transgendered ladies" among a crowd of racing fans at the Cheltenham festival.

Paddy Power and broadcaster BSkyB were accused of inciting transphobia with the campaign, which promised
to make the festival's Ladies' Day "even more exciting by adding some
beautiful transgendered ladies: Spot the stallions from the mares".

A. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance that covers birth control.

B. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance.
The health insurance company is required to cover birth control.

I can understand someone endorsing both A and B, and I can understand
someone rejecting both A and B. But I cannot understand someone
rejecting A and embracing B, because they are effectively the same
policy. Ultimately, all insurance costs are passed on to the purchaser,
so I cannot see how policy B is different in any way from policy A,
other than using slightly different words to describe it.

Yet it seems that the White House yesterday switched from A to B, and
that change is being viewed by some as a significant accommodation to
those who objected to policy A. The whole thing leaves me scratching my
head.

Before you decide to spend a bundle to vacation in the picturesque island nation of Maldives:

MALE (AFP)
— At the Maldives’ National Museum, smashed Buddhist statues are
testament to the rise of Islamic extremism and Taliban-style intolerance
in a country famous as a laid-back holiday destination.

On Tuesday, as protesters backed by mutinous police toppled president
Mohamed Nasheed, a handful of men stormed the Chinese-built museum and
destroyed its display of priceless artifacts from the nation’s
pre-Islamic era.

“They have effectively erased all evidence of our Buddhist past,” a
senior museum official told AFP at the now shuttered building in the
capital Male, asking not to be named out of fear for his own safety.

“We lost all our 12th century statues. They were made of
coral stone and limestone. They are very brittle and there is no way we
can restore them,” he explained.

“I wept when I heard that the entire display had gone. We are good
Muslims and we treated these statues only as part of our heritage. It is
not against Islam to display these exhibits,” he said.
Five people have since been arrested after they returned the following day to smash the CCTV cameras, he said.

The authorities have banned photography of the damage, conscious that
vandalism of this kind which echoes the 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan
Buddha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban is damaging for the
nation’s image.

Thanks to Weasel Zippers for alerting us to this story. Complete story from AFP can be found HERE.

Both teams are in their locker rooms discussing what they can do to
win this game in the second half. Diagramming plays. Texting their
agents and German supermodel wives. Reviewing Belichick's aerial spy
photos.

It’s halftime in America, too. People are hurting, and it isn't
because of towel snapping and the ol' Kramergesic-in-the-jockstrap
prank. They’re beat up and bruised, and wondering what they’re going to
do to make a comeback. We’re all scared, because this isn’t a game. And
because we're up against the Dragons and their all-Asia linebacker Hong
Kong Chong with his crazy 'roid rage chopsockey chop-blocks.

The people of Detroit know a little something about this. Okay, yeah, so this isn't Detroit, it's actually New Orleans.
So sue me. We were supposed to film this in Detroit, but GM rented it
out to film their Chevy Truck Apocalypse ad. But imagine this really was
Detroit, with all its gritty inspiring he-man decay. When the chips
were down we all pulled together, hosed down the streets, and turned up
the dramatic shadow lighting. Now Motor City is fighting again - as the
world's cheapest location shoot for zombie movies.

GM sold just 603 Volts -
above its sales in January 2011, but far below GM's best-ever sales
month in December, when GM sold 1,529 Volts.

Why might that be happening? Other than folks seeing through the whole "eco-friendly" pitch? (Which by the way gets demolished by one simple question - So, just where does the electricity to charge the battery come from?)

Last week, GM North America President Mark Reuss said sales of the Volt have been hurt by bad publicity.

Reuss said bad publicity from the government's investigation into fire risks
of post-crash Volts is "definitely a component" of the decline in sales.

Hello?

You might think that Government Motors would have been shielded by the administration. I guess that a series of blazing cars is something that's kind of hard to hide.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

KINGSTON, Ont. — Three members of a Montreal family have been ordered
imprisoned for life after a jury found them guilty of murdering four
other family members in a what the judge called “cold-blooded, shameful
murders” based on a “twisted notion of honour.”

Mohammad Shafia, 58, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and
their son Hamed, 21, were each found guilty of four counts of
first-degree murder after a jury deliberated for 15 hours.

Hamed appeared to collapse onto the front railing of the prisoner’s
box as the verdicts were announced. His father, standing next to him,
put his hand on his shoulder and then on top of his head. Yahya appeared
to begin crying.

“There is nothing more honourless than the deliberate murder of, in
the case of Mohammad Shafia, three of his daughters and his wife … in
the case of Tooba Yahya, three of her daughters and a stepmother to all
her children, in the case of Hamed Shafia three of sisters and a
mother,” Judge Robert Maranger, of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice
said, before he passed sentence.

“The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was
that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion
of honour — a notion of honour that is founded upon the domination and
control of women, a sick notion of honour that has absolutely no place
in any civilized society.”

An in-depth story and analysis from Christie Blatchford of the National Post is HERE.

Perhaps the verdict will bring this horrific practice more into public view. It amazes me that modern liberal feminists seem blind to this problem. I guess it's a feeling of "it can't happen here". Yet the leaders of the "sisterhood" somehow find it easier to protest for equal pay and similar measures - even when women are dying. Maybe it's not their kind of women who are suffering. In any case, I await NOW to make this issue number one. I fear that I will be waiting for a long while.

"Well," said the man, "I'm not going to give you money. Instead, I'm going to take you home for a shower and a terrific dinner cooked by my wife."

The homeless man was astounded. "Won't your wife be furious with you for doing that? The man replied, "That's okay. It's important for her to see what a man looks like after he has given up drinking, fishing and hunting ."

Once again, Big Brother wants to punish the one who points out the truth.

A ninth grader who snapped a picture of a snoozing substitute teacher with his cell phone camera and posted it on a social network is in hot water with his school district.

The unnamed student, who attends Mustang Mid-High School in Mustang, Okla., was suspended, according to ABC affiliate KOCO. The picture shows a "close-eyed man reclining behind a desk", The Oklahoman reported.

Let's protect the sleeping teacher and punish the kid who documented the truth. Much like the man arrested for recording his run-in with the TSA at the Albuquerque airport.

Of all the themes and subjects absent from Obama’s speech,
however, the most depressing omission was also the most
unquantifiable: hope. The word itself appeared just once. Obama
as candidate was all about offering hope. Obama as president --
somewhat understandably -- has been more about staving off
despair. Double-digit unemployment will do that to a president.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Passengers from the Costa Condordia have received settlement offers from Costa.

The owners of the Costa Concordia are offering survivors of the disaster a 30
per cent discount off future cruises as they battle to stave off law suits
expected to cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

One British survivor of the disaster, which claimed 12 lives with 20 people
still missing, branded the offer as "insulting".

It was disclosed that in an attempt to help survivors the ship's parent
company, Carnival, has been telephoning passengers daily asking if they are
suffering nightmares or sleepless nights.

But that move also appeared to backfire when a psychologist said such
questioning could trigger post traumatic stress rather than relieve it.

And other tidbits including:

An emergency services log showed that the Concordia's captain, Francisco
Schettino, abandoned ship more than four hours before the last passenger.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

She stops, then backs up on the street, finally coming out of the car in indignation. All that's missing is grabbing the neck and crying "Whiplash".

Go back and you'll see that the man walks out of the BMW with a briefcase in hand. Why, after a traffic incident, do you grab your briefcase? Maybe he had a tape recorder in there....or legal forms....or whatever.

I love how the driver of the rear car points to the dash-cam, and how the perps slink away. With any luck, the cops traced the license plate and nailed them.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

For your consideration - a long, but thoughtful piece on the coming revolution in higher education from National Affairs. It starts with:

In recent decades, key sectors of the American economy have
experienced huge and disruptive transformations — shifts that have
ultimately yielded beneficial changes to the way producers and customers
do business together. From the deregulation that brought about the end
of AT&T's "Ma Bell" system, to the way entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs
forever changed the computer world once dominated by IBM, to the way
the internet and bloggers have upended the business model of traditional
newspapers, we have seen industries completely remade — often in wholly
unexpected ways. In hindsight, such transformations seem to have been
inevitable; at the time, however, most leaders in these fields never saw
the changes coming.

The higher-education industry is on the verge of such a
transformative re-alignment. Many Americans agree that a four-year
degree is vastly overpriced — keeping many people out of the market —
and are increasingly questioning the value of what many colleges teach.
Nevertheless, for those who seek a certain level of economic security or
advancement, a four-year degree is absolutely necessary. Clearly, this
is a situation primed for change. In as little as a decade, most
colleges and universities could look very different from their present
forms — with the cost of a college credential plummeting even as the
quality of instruction rises.

The expense of solar energy subsidies is prompting a re-thinking of governmental efforts for "Green" energy to replace traditional electricity sources. From Der Spiegel:

The costs of subsidizing solar electricity have exceeded the
100-billion-euro mark in Germany, but poor results are
jeopardizing the country's transition to renewable energy. The
government is struggling to come up with a new concept to promote the
inefficient technology in the future.

Note....that's Billion, with a B. 100 billion euros. Even with the recent fall in the value of the euro, that's a LOT of money. With the demands on Germany to bail out the PIIGS, politicians are realizing they can't have it all.

Having journeyed to Australia, Mister Bear knows that it's a spirited place with plenty of individualism to go around. Leaving out the part about those koalas that try to be "bears" but aren't, the Land Down Under is a great place. They've also got some common sense, IMO, in their legal system. Or at least in this case.

A nutty snack company in Australia
has won the right to call itself Nuckin Futs, despite an official ruling
that it was offensive.

A solicitor representing the Gold Coast company argued that the name was
not offensive because the words it suggested were commonplace in
everyday Australian language.

It has taken almost a year but after
rejecting the initial application, the Trade Marks Examiner has now
agreed to accept the Nuckin Futs trademark - as long as the company does
not aim its marketing at children. Mr White said that would not happen.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Jonah Goldberg had a suggestion that he posted yesterday, the day before The Strike:

Very soon Wikipedia will go dark for a day to protest something called SOPA.
During this event — future historians will call it a “knowledge eclipse”
— no one under the age of thirty will know how to confirm or disprove a
statement of fact.

It’ll be awesome.

Tomorrow you should go up to a 20-something and tell them things like “the fern is the world’s most popular carnivorous plant” and “Henry
VIII invented the internal combustion engine, but kept it secret to protect the environment” and they will have no choice but to believe you
as they will have no idea how to use, never mind find, a “reference book.”

Cats have gills, Larry Storch was the 37th president, the 48-53rd floors of the Empire State Building contain the real White
House, the pre-internet Wikipedia took up 700,000 floppy disks, Al Gore
was once the Vice President of the United States: True? False? It
doesn’t matter. These are just a few things you can tell these kids
today and they’ll have to believe you. What choice will they have?

Much is being made today of the "strike" by many websites, including Wikipedia, to go "dark" in protest over two bills pending in Congress. Richard Fernandez writes at PJ Media that this may just be another useless gesture:

But one or two day ‘strikes’ aren’t going to do much as a long as the
forces which are creating a gargantuan and intrusive state are at
loose. The administration may simply wait the ‘Internet strike’ out and
try again until they get what they want. An activist government
wielding ever-growing tools of central planning has its own dynamic. The
rise of favored groups is an essential feature of a highly regulated
economy.

The process is often simple. Find a bogeyman — corporations will do —
and by “fighting it” get the power to pick winners and losers whether
in health care, finance, energy and the Internet. And soon all problems
will be ‘fixed’.

Mister Bear doesn't have enough readers for a strike here to be more than useless. So I stayed "light" today. Read Fernandez's complete article for more thoughts on the inevitable governmental urge to control the Internet.

You know....the one about doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.

This concluding paragraph from a story about Greek sovereign debt brought it back to mind. It quotes Edward Parker, Managing Director for ratings agency Fitch's Sovereign and Supranational Group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

"(Disorderly default), would be, for us, the really damaging situation, but one which we
are certainly not expecting to happen because, clearly, in a rational
situation you would think Greek politicians and European policy makers
would ensure that it doesn't happen."

Of course, Greek politicians and European policy makers haven't acted rationally in past debt situations, including the most recent package of bailouts. So, why should we expect them to do so now?

Hope you're shorting the Euro. That would be my forex currency play. The only question is, how long will Germany, and the German people allow themselves to be dragged down by the wasteful actions of other countries?

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

For years, I've scratched my head at the headlong rush to provide unearned praise on our schoolchildren. It spilled over into sports and interpersonal relationships. Everyone has heard the stories of soccer games where no one keeps score and everyone gets a trophy.

Turns out that the common sense response of "You have got to be kidding me" is turning out to have scientific support. From the Washington Post:

A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy,
unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with
significant learning opportunities. As schools ratchet up academic standards
for all students, new buzzwords are “persistence,” “risk-taking” and
“resilience” — each implying more sweat and strain than fuzzy, warm
feelings.

“We used to think we could hand children self-esteem on a
platter,” Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck said. “That has
backfired.”

They say that free advice is worth what you pay for it. Seems that unearned praise has the same value.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Charles Crawford, from the UK, writing about Tom Harris, the "Social Media Tsar" (sic) of the Labour Party:

Of course the really idiotic thing about all this is that Labour thinks
it needs a 'Social Media Tsar' at all. The whole point, Labour, of
social media is that it is a spontaneous crowd-sourcing Towers of Babel
chaotic phenomenon in which order emerges as it does. It's utterly
unsuited to any sort of political busy-body Tsardom. See?

But, if your natural inclinations run towards central control, you want to control everything. Much like the old line "If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail".

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Mister Bear lives in a forest that has a relatively moderate climate. Not like Minnesota or Phoenix, to mention two extremes. Mostly, it's just pleasant and comfortable.
All that changed yesterday, when OMW (Old Man Winter) decided to drop about 3 inches of the white stuff outside the cave.

Now, compared to Buffalo, that's just a dusting. But MB has grown to like the milder climes. So it looks as though it was a good idea to stock up on milk, bread, steaks and the like. There's a snow shovel somewhere, but I'm hoping that Al Gore's global warming comes in the next day or two.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

MEXICO CITY – Mexican medics are drawing catcalls after they dropped a heart being rushed to a hospital for a transplant.

Mexico City police say they used a helicopter to deliver the heart in "a rapid, precision maneuver." But after exiting the chopper, a medic stumbled and the plastic-wrapped heart tumbled out of a cooler onto the street.

The medic returned the heart to the cooler, and the Health Department confirms it arrived at the hospital where the recipient was waiting.

There has been no information on whether the transplant was successful.

Was this a governmental health care system? Or just their version of an HMO?

Mr. Bear didn't end up as a rug in some cabin. Though he was close to being declared legally dead for being missing for so long. Nothing serious, though. Just a bit of life getting in the way of blogging. A couple of my friends in the forest have started expressing themselves with their own blogs, so I couldn't let them be the only ones.